


the scold's bridle

by perkalowy (Mikkeneko)



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Geralt is a good friend, Hurt Jaskier | Dandelion, M/M, Soft Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Trauma, field medicine, geralt to the rescue!, it's me I'm assholes, moderately detailed depictions of violence, no tag for that one huh?, some assholes are mean to jaskier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:22:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22776343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mikkeneko/pseuds/perkalowy
Summary: After a violent encounter with brigands on the road, Jaskier develops a lingering trauma connected to his music. It's up to Geralt to try to help him -- but it's not something his training ever prepared him for.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 209
Kudos: 1092





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> hello! i'm watching The Witcher and have fallen in love with jaskier, and as usual my way of showing affection to my faves is to be very very mean to them, so have Yet Another "jaskier gets grabbed by bandits and geralt rides to the rescue" fic, which I have seen done many times already but what the heck, i felt inspired. Also another "jaskier loses his voice and geralt discovers he Does Not Like It as much as he thought he would" fic.
> 
> content warnings: moderately graphic depictions of violence, including human deaths in combat and the aftermath of torture. there's also some unstated implications of sexual assault -- Geralt doesn't pick up on it, and Jaskier doesn't volunteer the information, but it's sort of behind the scenes there. honestly, I'm finding the Witcher fandom overall a lot more on the dark and bloody side than my last fandom -- fans don't seem to hold back from taking some gritty angles! it's a bit of a change of pace for me, but not a bad one.
> 
> some OOCness is likely -- Jaskier hardly talks at all for the first two-thirds of the fic, due first to injury then to trauma. this is my first time writing either of them, and I was really concentrating on getting more inside geralt's head than jaskier's this time around. I have another fic planned for later with the chairs reversed, Jaskier taking care of Geralt when he's in trouble and concentrating on his view of events.
> 
> so, without further ado!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somewhere on the road between Cordam and Ellander, Jaskier vanished.
> 
> Thing is, that road is supposed to be safe. Safe as any can be. It's on a major route between Kaer Morhen and the great cities of the Redanian coast, so it gets walked often by Witchers. It's well-enough populated that there's not much room for bigger beasties to dig in and settle, loud enough and busy enough for smaller monsters to be frightened away. No standing water, no thick forest, most of the dens and lairs have been dug out or filled in long ago. There should _be_ no monsters on this road.
> 
> Only men.

It isn't that he's  _ stalking _ Jaskier. He just -- checks in on him. From time to time.

Jaskier isn't hard to track. He makes a lot of noise, leaves an impression everywhere he goes; even if his career didn't depend on it, his personality probably would. Dressing in bright colors, full of voice,  _ look at me look at me _ loud enough to turn the heads of half the village. He wouldn't be a very good bard if he couldn't draw a crowd, and whatever else he is, Jaskier is  _ very  _ good at what he does.

In towns where Jaskier has passed through, it doesn't take much to get people talking about him. Some are inclined to be unfriendly, some are inclined to be suspicious that such a grim-looking fighting man should be asking after a civilian, some suspect him of foul intent. (And that's fair.) But as soon as they recognize him --  _ the White Wolf of Rivia? --  _ they seem to accept that he has a right to know, that he has a stake in the man's whereabouts and welfare. Seem to think that the bard  _ belongs _ to him in some way, or maybe that he belongs to Jaskier.

(And that's fair too.)

He has a general sense of Jaskier's direction. It's not hard to follow, not to any hunter worth his salt -- once you know the quarry's habits it's easy to chart a course from town to town, inn to inn, market to market. Not like the bard makes it a secret, publicity is his whole job. If a town or an inn anticipates his arrival, all the better -- drum up a crowd before he even arrives. (It's not  _ stalking _ because it's perfectly public knowledge where Jaskier is going; it's not some kind of  _ secret.) _

So when Geralt stops by an inn Jaskier was supposed to have reached  _ yesterday  _ and doesn't find him there, he knows something is wrong.

He backtracks to the last town along Jaskier's route, questions the innkeeper, questions the townsfolk -- yes, the bard in blue was here, yes, he left on foot yesterday morning. It's only a half days' travel even at the idle pace Jaskier walks. He should have made it easily. He should have made it safe.

Somewhere on the road between Cordam and Ellander, Jaskier vanished.

Thing is, that road is supposed to be safe. Safe as any can be. It's on a major route between Kaer Morhen and the great cities of the Redanian coast, so it gets walked often by Witchers. It's well-enough populated that there's not much room for bigger beasties to dig in and settle, loud enough and busy enough for smaller monsters to be frightened away. No standing water, no thick forest, most of the dens and lairs have been dug out or filled in long ago. There should  _ be _ no monsters on this road.

Only men.

Back again to Cordam. Goes back to the inn where Jaskier stayed the night, traces the route to the edge of town and the road leading onward. It's been a night and a day, but the weather's held clear. He slides off Roach, bends half-over to put his face close to the road, and searches for tracks.

It's a fairly well-traveled road. Not many could pick out one light set of tracks from the ruts and treads and wheelmarks that tear up the road, but he has an advantage: he knows Jaskier's habits. Knows how he'll walk on the grass on the verge instead of the mud of the ruts if he has a choice, knows the size of his shoes and weight of his steps. Spring is coming on but the new growth is still thin, the earth damp and soft beneath the sprinkling of green; he picks out the right set of tracks after only a few minutes of searching and follows it.

By the time he finds the place where the tracks break off, it's late afternoon. The year's still young enough that the sun goes down early, slanting at an angle that throws shadows from every rut and hillock. Still, the scene isn't all that hard to read.

Jaskier came this way. His footprints are even and measured, he wasn't hurrying. He came around a bend in the road, topped a small rise, and then stopped. Stumbled. Geralt can't tell what else might have been happening, what Jaskier might have seen, what he might have said -- but shortly after the place he stumbles, other tracks appear. At least three -- Geralt counts -- four of them. Big, heavy tracks of men heavily laden -- or wearing heavy kit. Jaskier's steps become ragged, uneven; long gouges appear in the mud, the grass is torn. 

With as many years of tracking as he has under his belt Geralt can read the scene as clearly as if he were standing there. He can see the confrontation, the stand, the turn to violence -- the advance and retreat, the scuffle and the blows -- but his vision is flat, two-dimensional, limited to footfalls on the ground. He can tell (more or less)  _ what _ happened, but not who, not why.

(Four-on-one, and the bard's no fighter. Does it really matter  _ why?) _

Faint smells, hours old and dispersed into the air, provide only a little more hints as to what happened. Broken plants, turned ground. Faint smell of sweat, of men... horses? Yes, he finds the prints; at least two horses. Here and there, on the rocks on the ground: traces of blood. Blood he knows. 

Jaskier's.

In moments he's back on the track, following men and horses as they all converge together and lead up off the road, a faint trail over the ridge into the scrublands back towards the hills. Hills that don't provide shelter for monsters, but all too much cover for evil men.

It hardly takes any skill to follow the trail even in the rapidly dying light. Four sets of boots, two horses. Jaskier's footsteps are nowhere to be found among any of them any more, but in the wake of the horses there are long gouges and furrows ripped into the ground. Here and there, where the trail crosses sharp rocks, smears of blood. More and more blood, in fact, as the trail goes on.

Geralt's jaw is clenched so hard he thinks his teeth with crack from the pressure of it. He inhales a deep breath, smells fresh-turned earth and rust-iron and horse-piss and  _ blood, _ and follows the trail.

* * *

~tbc...


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Geralt's not worried that Jaskier's going to hurt him -- he wouldn't be worried about that even if Jaskier were on his feet and armed and in full health. But he _is_ worried that the man is going to hurt himself, struggling with wild unhinged fervor, and for no purpose at all. "Jaskier!" he calls and he makes another grab for the bard's less-injured shoulder, stepping up to either side of his hips to get clear of another kick. This time he manages to get a grip on the man that stills him, pulls his shoulders up off the ground until they're face-to-face, or close enough. "Jaskier, it's me, you're safe!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: violent deaths in combat, detailed descriptions of the aftermath of torture.

It takes several hours to run to the end of Jaskier's trail. The sun is long gone and the moon, though nearing full, doesn't shed much light on the scene. Fortunately his night vision is good, and his quarry isn't making any real effort to hide. They left a trail so broad and straight that they might as well have put up a damn signpost.

Once he sees the glimmer of light through the trees ahead, he abandons the trail entirely. Leaves Roach in the dark woods, reins looped over the pommel so she can range freely, and heads straight towards the faint flicker of light. It's further off than he thought -- the fire a bigger one than he'd expected, a well-established camp with a bonfire at the center and a few torches set up around the perimeter. 

Geralt ghosts from tree to tree, making a slow circuit around the camp. A base camp, not a night camp; the bulky shrouds of at least two tents, piles of equipment and crude furniture around the central fire. Silhouettes pass in front of the fire and he counts. Five... six altogether, two more combining with the four he'd followed. The horses here as well, shifting restless and nervous at the faint scent of him on the wind. They know what's coming, even if their masters don't.

No sign of Jaskier; he doesn't see the bard's familiar shape or silhouette anywhere against the light, although the stench of his blood hangs heavy over the encampment. In one of the tents, maybe. Geralt's heartbeat pulses in his ears as though trying to escape from his body, give some vent to his rage, but he stays in control, for now. Stays stealthy, steady, and methodical until he has the whole camp mapped out in his mind's eye.

He doesn't like killing humans. Really, he doesn't. He was made to kill monsters, and men -- men are too easy. It's distasteful, it's depressing, and it  _ always _ causes more trouble than it solves in the end. 

Usually he'd at least try to talk things out first. Give them a chance to see reason, to resolve things peacefully, for everyone to get what they want and walk away alive. It never works, of course. But it's very important to him that he at least try.

So he walks into the campsite, so casual and self-assured that it takes the bandits a moment to even register that he's among them, a wolf among weasels.  _ Then _ comes the shouting, the belligerent cries and fearful mutters, weapons grabbed, grubby hands pointing towards his hair, his scars, his inhuman eyes.

**"Gentlemen,"** he says, because he'll at least give them _one_ chance. Draws his steel sword and sets it point down in front of him, hands wrapped comfortably over the hilt. **"I think you've taken something that doesn't belong to you."**

A moment's silence, the bandits staring at him slack-jawed and gap-toothed -- then one charges him with a cry and the others follow.

Well, he tried.

  
  


* * *

His biggest worry was that one or more of them would have grabbed a bow, or some other long-range weapon. There are ways to deal with those, but it's hard to do and even harder when you've got three opponents up in your face. If they'd managed to pin him down in close-combat while a few more of them stood off to the side and shot at him, they  _ might _ have had a chance.

He's in luck. There's not a bow or sling among them, or at the least it doesn't occur to the bandits to go for it. Instead three of them crowd in close and he'll give them this -- at least they have the brains to all dogpile him at once instead of coming at him one at a time. He thinks there might actually be some strategy in this, crude as it is -- two of them grapple him, weigh him down and get in the way of his arms while two more come in with knives and clubs. It's not a  _ bad _ strategy, if basic -- it would work against most men, if they were alone. 

(It almost certainly worked against Jaskier.)

But he's not a man; he's a Witcher and all their weight can't make him lose his footing, and their knives turn on his armor and the club bounces off a thick shoulder without making a dent, and Geralt calls the _word_ that makes the air glisten and tremble, that blows two of them back and he's able to draw steel and bring it around, and one -- two -- half his attackers are down.

Knife-boy falls back, mouth opening on a cry of dismay; he can't be far out of his teens, raw-boned and gangly with greasy brown hair falling in lank tangles over his face. He's so out of his league it's not even fucking funny but he's also too stupid to know it, and when he rushes Geralt with the long rusty knife in an icepick grip he runs himself right onto Geralt's blade.

The next figure comes at him screaming, both hands overhead swinging a torch in his face, and he's parried it and thrown the attacker aside before the face and form register on him and he stumbles, caught for just an instant as he winces back. It's a woman -- he didn't expect that. Not young. Iron-gray curls spilling out from under a cap, a filthy apron over an equally ragged grey dress. A camp follower, maybe the sister or mother of some of the others. 

She's also doing her level best to shove the burning brand into his eyes, shrieking curses and bloody vengeance; Geralt's training kicks in and he throws his opponent back with a shoulder and follows up as she stumbles back, the steel slicing easily across her front. She's not wearing armor; there's nothing more to get in the path of the blade than fabric and flesh, and she stumbles back and collapses on the ground with a wet death-rattle.

_"Matka!"_ one of the still-standing brigands yells, his voice laced with horror and outrage. He charges Geralt with a primal scream, a heavy mattock held overhead like a broadaxe. He swings with a single-minded fury, leaves himself _completely_ open, and Geralt steps in and to the right to avoid the wild swing as he brings his point-up and runs it smoothly through the bandit's chest.

He writhes on the ground, groaning and frothing with blood, and Geralt looks up to see the one remaining bandit standing at the edge of the circle, a rusty sword in hand, looking between Geralt and the woods nervously. "Well?" Geralt demands. "Are you gonna run, or what?"

Even that short statement was apparently enough to make up the man's mind; he grips his weapon with new determination and charges in, yelling his bloody head off. Without changing expression, Geralt parries the blade wide-open and his return sweep takes the man's head off.

It's over in less than a minute. Geralt stays in his ready-stance, chest heaving, listening to the slow steady drip-drip of liquid off his hands, off the end of his sword. The two horses let off shrill calls of alarm, sidling away from the stench of blood and death that fills the clearing. It's over and he feels nothing but disgust, both at his opponents and at himself. That hadn't been anything like an even fight, that hadn't been  _ necessary, _ if they'd had half an ounce of brains among them to give up when they were so manifestly outclassed --

But disgust is not the same as regret, and even as Geralt swings his sword back to rest he's moving on. On to the reason he's here in the first place. Now that the campsite has been cleared of foes, he can find Jaskier.

It's not much of a search once he's in the light and the bandits are out of the way. The tents are both empty, apart from limp bundles of bedding. But on the far side of the tents, in a filthy pile of crates and bundles, there's a body. Blue-clad, from what he can see under the stains of blood and dirt. Dark-haired. Unmoving.

The stench of blood gets even stronger as he gets closer, and the only reason he doesn't panic is that it's still fresh. Death-smell sets in very quickly, and unless this person died in the last ten minutes while he was scouting the camp and seeing off these damnable bandits, he should -- 

The creeping tide of panic subsides in relief as he reaches Jaskier's side -- it  _ is _ him, unmistakably -- and sees the shallow rise and fall of his chest, the slow ooze of blood. And there's a lot of blood.

Jaskier is sprawled face-down on the ground and he's absolutely filthy. His fine clothes have been wrecked, slashed and muddied where they weren't scoured away. His arms are outflung over his head, wrists bound together by a rope that has scored deep gouges into the flesh of his hands and forearms. The left one is bruised black, swollen and purple, and the bruising goes all the way up to his shoulder which hangs grossly loose out of the socket. Dislocated, Geralt diagnoses immediately, and puts the pieces together to confirm what the tracks had ominously hinted: he was dragged.

Simple cruelties, but cruel enough. They tied his hands to the back of their horse and then made the horses gallop, and the rocky ground itself inflicted most of the damage. His clothes were no protection; his fine doublet and trousers are scoured almost to nothingness. Large patches of skin and flesh have been flayed off him and dirt rubbed into the raw oozing wounds. Geralt fights against waves of rage that want to rise and overtake him; there's nothing left for the rage to do, the bandits are already dead.

The bard's right hand doesn't look as bad, Geralt observes as he stoops over his friend. Through either luck or foresight Jaskier's hands worked round in the binding such that his left arm took most of the punishment, and his valuable dominant right was relatively protected. Geralt reaches down to take hold of Jaskier's shoulder, to roll him over and wake him up.

The moment his hand closes on Jaskier's arm the man flinches, curling away from Geralt's grasp and shrinking inwards. The next moment he's fighting as hard as he can, thrashing and kicking in Geralt's direction with the unbridled fury of the truly desperate. Geralt loses his grip as Jaskier jerks his good arm free, dragging the dislocated one behind it; a heel bounces off Geralt's armor with such force that it sends Jaskier skidding a few inches through the dirt. There's a dark stain on the ground where Jaskier had been lying that reeks of iron.

Geralt's not worried that Jaskier's going to hurt him -- he wouldn't be worried about that even if Jaskier were on his feet and armed and in full health. But he  _ is _ worried that the man is going to hurt himself, struggling with wild unhinged fervor, and for no purpose at all. "Jaskier!" he calls and he makes another grab for the bard's less-injured shoulder, stepping up to either side of his hips to get clear of another kick. This time he manages to get a grip on the man that stills him, pulls his shoulders up off the ground until they're face-to-face, or close enough. "Jaskier, it's me, you're safe!"

The bard goes limp, sagging in his grip as his head lolls back on his neck, and he blinks blurrily as though Geralt's face is swimming in his focus. Which it might be, the light's poor and Jaskier doesn't have a witcher's night vision -- and for a moment, Geralt almost wishes he didn't either.

Jaskier's face is a mask of blood. Geralt knows that head wounds bleed like crazy even when they aren't serious, but -- there's a  _ lot _ of blood. Streamers of it flow down from under his hairline, striping his forehead and and caking his hair into dark spikes. His eyes are bloodshot too, the whites turned crimson, and it's impossible to tell where it's coming from. The bottom half of his face is completely painted with red, fresh and dried, flowing from what looks like a broken nose and --

A steady stream of blood trickling from his mouth. 

Geralt tries not to panic, forces Jaskier's face upwards so he can see. A dark leather band across his cheeks resolves in the light to some kind of gag -- metal glinting -- like a  _ bit _ forced between Jaskier's teeth, like he's an unruly horse they can tame. The edges of the metal -- wire? -- cut into the corners of his mouth, oozing blood. As he holds Jaskier's jaw at an angle, trying to get the light on it, Jaskier twitches and begins to cough softly, rising quickly into a choking noise as he pushes ineffectually at Geralt's hands. 

It takes Geralt a second to realize the problem -- with his nose broken he can't breathe through it, and holding his head tilted back like this means the blood runs back into his throat, choking him. He pulls back with a curse, letting Jaskier lean forward and retch, the red liquid pouring out of his mouth onto the ground. Gritting his teeth, Geralt reaches for his knife.

He cuts the rope first, takes the time to unwind it carefully from the channels cut in Jaskier's skin so that the coarse fibers don't tear more as they're dragged away. Jaskier makes a soft sound of relief, head swaying as he looks down at his arms, tries to move them. Winces and aborts the motion of his left arm as soon as it starts, grabbing left wrist with his right hand and dragging it to a neutral position across his lap. "I'll fix that in a moment," Geralt promises him. "Just... sit tight. Breathe. Let me get..."

His words trail off again as he moves the knife up to Jaskier's face. The bard eyes the silver blade a little warily -- or maybe he's just having trouble focusing -- but he stays put as Geralt slices through the leather band without scoring a scratch on Jaskier's face. Loosens it from around the back of his head, and goes to pull it free.

It doesn't budge.

A frown pulls at his face and Geralt tries again, turns Jaskier towards the light so he can get a better angle on the strange gag. The only light is the flickering orange bonfire, which casts leaping shadows and not much illumination. The strap is definitely loose, but there's still -- resistance, like it's caught on something. He tries again, this time getting a good grip on the -- wire, metal frame? What  _ is _ this? He can't  _ see _ it, damn it, not even with his night eyes -- and giving it a sharp yank.

Something catches and  _ pulls, _ and suddenly dark blood is welling up over his fingers and spilling out of Jaskier's mouth in a fresh tide. Jaskier's whole body spasms as he tries to flinch back, and a terrible noise erupts from his throat. He lurches backwards, his good hand flying up to clamp over the lower half of his face. More blood wells out from between his fingers.

Geralt yanks his hand back as though the wire had burned him. His entire chest feels suddenly cold and hollow, reverberating as though from a great blow. That scream -- it rings in his ears, deafening, and it's not that he's never heard Jaskier scream before, usually when being chased by something or other, it's --

Jaskier has a powerful voice whether he's singing or yelling in terror, but he's  _ never _ heard a sound like that from his bard before now. The raw, unshaped  _ noise _ of it is nothing like the voice Jaskier uses to rouse a tavern or a hillside. It's a sound of bestial agony, an animal in too much pain to fight or flee its torment, and Geralt -- he  _ never _ wants to hear that noise again. Not from Jaskier.

"I --  _ fuck." _ It feels inadequate, but it's all he's got. He can't try that again. Not yet. 

Jaskier curls up on the ground a foot or so away from him, hand still covering his face as wet red trickles between his fingers and drips down his wrist. He looks -- well, Geralt's seen worse, but not usually on humans. At first he'd judged that none of Jaskier's wounds were serious enough to be life-threatening, but the accumulation is making him uneasy. How much blood did Jaskier lose between the ambush on the road and here? How much is he losing even now? Any one of these wide-open gouges could fester and inflame with killing fever. His shoulder isn't a fatal wound, but if it stays displaced for too long he might suffer permanent damage in his arm. If he can't play the lute again --

The cold shivering sensation in Geralt's chest is back, accompanied by an unpleasant crawling sensation that sends a foul taste at the back of his throat. Guilt, he identifies. It's guilt. Was this attack his fault somehow? Did the bandits target the bard because of his association with  _ him? _

He needs to get Jaskier cleaned up. Get his wounds treated and the bleeding staunched. And by the gods, he does not want to do it  _ here.  _ Ankle-deep in the blood and guts of the bandits he slaughtered, their crude and violent seat of power, the place where Jaskier had suffered and bled -- so much.

Jaskier probably doesn't want to stay here any longer either.

"Hm. Okay," he says, clears his throat from the taste of metal and bile that's trying to crawl onto his tongue. He crouches down next to Jaskier and gets a hand under his good arm, gets him uncurled enough to make eye contact. "I need daylight for this, I can't see... whatever they did well enough to undo it. We'll get go make camp... somewhere else."

Jaskier is shuddering all over, the sort of bone-deep head-to-foot rattle that comes when a human body has been strained past all thresholds of fatigue. He's barely keeping himself up, but his head drops in an unmistakable nod. He looks up at Geralt and the bloody mask of his face makes Geralt's stomach turn like he's just taken a shot of mutagen.

Geralt stands up. It's clear that Jaskier won't be able to, not on his own, but he manages to get an arm around his back and a hand on his good elbow, and he thinks he can steer him. "Let's get out of here," he says, and Jaskier nods again.

* * *

Moving camp turns out to be a fucking ordeal. He can see pretty well in the dark and there is still some moonlight, but it barely penetrates the tree cover. Geralt wouldn't normally try it in the middle of the night, in a forest, even without all the dead weight suddenly on his hands. 

Jaskier can neither walk nor ride well, and Geralt will be damned if he leaves him here alone to go scout. One lucky break, Roach is still close enough to hear and respond to Geralt's piercing whistle. He wastes more time than he likes trying to grab everything from the bandit camp that he thinks they'll need before sunrise. They can come back later -- probably -- but he's learned better over the years to assume that things left behind will still be there when you go back for them.

(Which holds true for bards, too, he's learning.)

In the end he gets Roach loaded up with enough goods to make her ears lay back and teeth bare in protest, including the cast-iron cauldron that had been sitting at the edge of the firepit and a bundle of the cleanest blankets he can find in this pit. Far too much to journey with in the long run, but they don't need to go far and he's not riding right now, so she'll just have to lump it.

They head upstream from the bandit campsite, the watercourse giving a break in the tree cover that lets a little moonlight spill through the trees. Progress is painfully slow with Jaskier only being able to limp, even with Geralt's arm slung over his back supporting half his weight. Even with that slow pace he's beginning to flag before they've gone half a mile, and Geralt calls a halt the minute they stumble onto a suitable site: a small glade about twenty feet back from the stream with a flat enough floor, and no widowmakers overhead.

Jaskier leans against Roach with Geralt's last water canteen in hand while Geralt lays out the camp, quick and efficient even in these conditions with the practice of ten thousand nights and ten thousand camps just like this one. There are enough stones littering the clearing, shining pale in the moonlight, for him to assemble a rough base for the fire and have a few large ones left over to sit on. He'd dumped some sand into the cauldron with coals on top, which saves him the trouble of having to start a fire from scratch, and before too long it's roaring up and filling the small clearing with heat and dull yellow light.

Once the rough camp is set Geralt can turn his attention back to Jaskier. He guides the bard to sit down with his left side turned to the fire, tosses a few more fresh branches on it despite the increased smoke so that he'll have light to work with. Jaskier's tunic is already in shreds; he doesn't even make a noise of protest when Geralt cuts away the last few threads and eases the ragged remains of the sleeve off his battered and empurpled arm. He gives it a cursory examination in the light of the fire, but it doesn't tell him anything he doesn't already know.

"I have to set this," he says, breaking the silence; the first words spoken since they'd left the bandit camp. It feels strange and unpleasant to be in a camp with Jaskier and be the only one talking. But he pulls his mind back from that, focuses on the task at hand. Looks up from Jaskier's shoulder to meet his eyes. "It's going to hurt like a son of a bitch, but it has to be done." At Jaskier's wide-eyed, white-rimmed look, he adds, "The longer it's left displaced, the worse your chances are of permanent damage in that hand."

Geralt had seen it happen once; one of the older Witchers had fallen off a cliff during a hunt and simply strapped the arm to his side until he returned to Kaer Morhen. By the time the arm was set back in its socket the damage had been done; he'd lost strength in his arm and feeling in three of his fingers for good. He'd been an archer before that; after, he couldn't even pull a bow. Geralt doesn't want to see that happen to Jaskier.

He can't miss the tension and flinch in Jaskier's muscles, the rapid increase in his breath; but Jaskier blinks rapidly, then nods in assent. 

This would be easier if there was a bed where Jaskier could lie flat, or at least a chair to brace himself against, but they'll just have to do without. He positions himself behind Jaskier, knee against the man's back to pin him in place, and takes hold of Jaskier's dislocated arm above and below the elbow. The light is shit, but it's as much by feel as by eye that he slowly levers the arm upwards, seeking the proper angle to pop the joint back into its socket.

Jaskier tenses up, the muscles of his shoulders and neck bunching until cords stand out against his neck, and the moan that escapes him makes Geralt's hair stand on end -- but he stays put, even if Geralt can feel the shaking in his arm and the tremble through his core, and Geralt holds fast to his task. 

Up a little more, he can  _ feel  _ the displaced grating of bone against bone, almost there but  _ not -- _ Jaskier whimpers and Geralt turns his forearm a little more outward, gives the elbow a little  _ shake, _ and the joint realigns with a  _ pop _ that he can feel as much as hear. He relaxes a fraction even as a pained groan spills from Jaskier's lips and the bard shivers with reaction. "Done," he says, and takes a moment to run his fingers carefully around the restored joint, feeling for proper fit and massaging the flesh back into place. 

He shifts to pressing down along Jaskier's arm, grimacing at the hot and swollen feeling of spilled blood under the skin. Nothing else feels out of place, thank the gods; nothing seems seriously broken. Geralt just hopes he'll get full use of the hand back, with time. Playing the lute takes such small movements, such fine control. What if it's already too late? What if Jaskier can never play again?

If you'd asked him a month ago, the prospect of never having to hear another fanciful, self-aggrandizing tale of his own exploits again would have sounded like a dream come true. Now that he's faced with the possibility of that really happening -- it tastes foul in his mouth.

With a blink, Geralt realizes he's reached the end of Jaskier's arm and is just holding his hand, chafing and kneading it slightly. Jaskier is looking at him,  _ fuck, _ he's still so hurt. Tears of pain have gathered in his eyes, run out the corners, leaving clean streaks in the coating of red. "That's all I can do right now," he says, letting go of Jaskier's hand. "The rest is going to need daylight. Dawn's still a few hours away; get whatever rest you can until then."

Jaskier nods again. To Geralt's surprise, he levers himself up against the rock and wobbles to his feet. Squinting around the campsite, he takes a few shaky, limping steps towards the edge of the glade.

Geralt is on his feet in a second. "Where are you going?!" he demands.

Jaskier makes a gesture between the trees, towards the river that they can hear but not see. Geralt raises his eyebrows. "Don't drown yourself," he says, and then, considering the unsteadiness of Jaskier's legs, "I'll come too."

To his surprise Jaskier shakes his head no. He makes another vague gesture towards the trees. Geralt scowls, steps up beside him. "What, you want to take a piss?" he says. "I don't care, Jaskier, for fuck's sake. I just don't want you to lose your footing --"

Jaskier shakes his head again, more vehemently, and gives Geralt a sharp little shove. It's the shock more than anything that Geralt lets that move him. "What?" he demands, but Jaskier won't meet his eyes.

Geralt doesn't understand. He doesn't, but Jaskier seems to be adamant that he needs a moment alone; and after a few more heartbeats of hesitation, Geralt sits back down on his rock. "All right," he says. "But if you aren't back in ten minutes, I'm coming to fish you out of the river."

The river isn't that far, honestly. Jaskier's out of sight but Geralt is still faintly aware of his presence just at the edge of hearing, of sense and smell. He takes the time to go through his bags, dig out everything he has that passes for medical supplies and go over treatments and tinctures in his head. He's got a fair amount -- a witcher has to be ready to do his own chirurgy, wherever he is -- but most of what he's got won't work on humans, damn it all. Not unless he wants to poison Jaskier in the process of healing him. He's been traveling by himself long enough that he's gotten out of the habit of carrying medical supplies for humans, when every ounce of weight on the road adds up over the miles. Now he wishes he'd taken the time back in the last town to stock up -- he knew Jaskier might be in trouble, he  _ knew, _ but he was too focused on following the trail and it hadn't occurred to him to re-stock until too late _. _

The bard makes his way back to the campsite at last, just before Geralt really would have gotten up to go after him. His steps are steadier, more measured, and he's not limping as badly now; but he won't look at Geralt, and his hands are covered with fresh blood.

Geralt thinks about what could have caused that -- what could have been hurting Jaskier that he refused to let the witcher see -- and it's enough to keep him awake and alert long after Jaskier lapses into an uneasy dose by the fire.

* * *

~tbc...


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Geralt's used to delivering bad news to relatives. Usually it's about missing people who turn up dead once the monster has been killed and the survivors can sift through the lair for mementos and bones. Sometimes it's for people he hadn't been fast enough to save. It's not usually people he killed himself, though it has happened once or twice. 
> 
> It's his least favorite thing about this job, and that includes occasionally being swallowed alive by selkiemores.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: wound treatment, medicinal use of drugs. Nothing _worse_ than past chapters, at least.

  
  


The rest of the night seems to crawl past. He's surprised Jaskier is able to sleep at all with how much pain he must be in -- but he dozes all the same, curled up on his side on top of a bedroll, close enough to the fire to sleep without anything on top of him. Geralt cleans his sword, cleans his armor, goes through the supplies in his bag a dozen times until he's come up with a start of a treatment plan. He still has some nepenthe, one of his few potions that works the same on humans as it does on Witchers -- the only difficulty will be in getting the dose right, to put Jaskier in a deep sleep without sending him straight into a coma or worse. Swallow is incredibly toxic to humans, but watered-down it's a _very_ effective topical disinfectant -- it will do to clean the wounds. In the last few hours before dawn even Geralt manages to snatch a few hours of meditation, propped up with his back against a tree and sword in his lap.

Nothing intrudes on them, and he wakes with the first rays of dawn striking the sky. He stands up, feeling his muscles snap and click together as he stretches, and starts to build up the fire. He doesn't bother to wake Jaskier; the sun's not high enough yet.

He takes the cauldron down to the stream and hauls it back full of water; by the time he returns Jaskier is awake. He hasn't moved, apparently feigning sleep, but his breathing and heart rate give the lie. In the light of day he looks both better and worse than he did by the light of the fire; less frenzied, less tormented, less streaked with hellfire. But it's also easier to see what they did to him in this light.

Geralt doesn't say anything. No point when Jaskier can't answer and besides, there's nothing to say. He kicks another branch onto the fire while he hauls the cauldron up over the coals to heat. Mixing medicines, cleaning wounds, he'll need boiled water for this and more of it than he can carry in his canteen; that was the main reason for taking the damned heavy thing with them last night. 

The sun creeps upwards as the water slowly comes to a boil and by the time both are high, he's ready. He measures and mixes out a cup of nepenthe and sets it aside, goes to crouch beside Jaskier's bedroll in his line of sight.

"Hey," he says, and adds "I can tell you're awake" when Jaskier still tries to play possum. Jaskier's eyes flutter open and focus on him, a little bit of the red has receded from his eyes but not enough. The bloodied sclera makes the blue of his eyes look strange, a startling contrast, like a flower growing up from a field of ruin. Geralt pushes the image away. "Those wounds will fester if they aren't cleaned. Let's get started."

He offers the drink when Jaskier sits up, suppresses a smile at the familiar way his nose crinkles when the pungent smell of the brew hits it. Jaskier stares at the cup, stares at him, makes no move to take it. There's a new tension, a wariness in his body and the set of his shoulders that Geralt isn't used to seeing from the loose-limbed, careless bard, and the smile fades quicker than it came. "Drink," he says a little more forcefully, pushing the cup closer, and Jaskier -- flinches from him.

Geralt sighs, lets his arm drop. "I'm not going to force it on you," he says quietly. "I'm not going to force anything on you. But I need to clean your wounds, and you don't want to be awake for it. Trust me."

At those last two words Jaskier visibly wavers, then relents. He takes the cup in his good hand, and with obvious difficulty knocks it back -- he can't drink properly like this, sticky liquid trickles out the sides of his mouth, and he coughs raggedly -- but enough of it gets down his throat.

The drug takes effect quickly and Geralt catches Jaskier as he sags. His eyes flutter shut, hiding both the blue and the red -- but as his head rolls back on his neck they fall open again, empty, sightless. His breathing quiets, his heart slows until it nearly matches Geralt's own, and his limbs go boneless. It's nothing like sleep; it's disturbingly like death, and although it was what Geralt wanted it still gives him a chill to see it.

He lays Jaskier out on a blanket on the streambank in the growing light of the morning and sets to work.

There's hardly enough of Jaskier's trousers left to call them that; what shreds of cloth are hanging on by threads part easily to reveal the abraded skin beneath. All up and down Jaskier's outer legs, hip and thigh and knee, his skin has been scoured away as though someone took a grinding stone to it. The flesh beneath is ripped, bloody and ugly, and here and there little pieces of gravel or twigs or thorns have become embedded in the meat. 

It takes a long time to work them out, wash the wounds clean, first with boiled water and then with the antiseptic solution. He has to stop every few minutes to wash blood off his hands in the cauldron. He wishes he had some healing salve or a poultice to wrap them with, but there's nothing; he'll have to make due with boiled cloth cut for bandages, at least till they can get back to town and find an apothecary. The skin will be a long time growing back, if Geralt is any judge. But Jaskier stood earlier, walked on his own two feet, so hopefully there's no permanent damage to his legs.

As he moves up Jaskier's body to his chest and arms, the wounds grow less. The worst injury here is the dislocated shoulder, which seems to be holding well enough from last night. He cleans the cuts and wounds on Jaskier's arms, finds another dislocated bone under a grossly swollen knuckle in his left hand which he sets, wraps the whole arm up and fashions a sling to hold it in place. Assuming Jaskier has the sense to leave it there, of course. 

It feels strange, working on Jaskier when he's so still and silent. He's intensely conscious of the other man's vulnerability, the immense trust he put in Geralt to put him under like this -- especially in the wake of the brutality he'd already suffered. He _trusts_ Geralt so, so much, even though Geralt could hurt him worse than any bandit. God knows why, but he does.

At last he moves up to the part of this he least wanted to do. He crouches on the riverbank beside Jaskier's head, reaches out to grip the bard's jaw and turn his face into the light. Bright white sun shines directly into his face, and Geralt takes a moment to drape a fold of the blanket over his eyes, since he can't close them against the light while he's under. But at last he can finally, _finally_ see what the bandits had done to Jaskier's mouth.

His first and worst fear -- that they had cut out his tongue, silenced his song forever -- is unfounded. He can't put words to his sense of relief. But there's some kind of -- bridle made of wire, forced between his teeth like a gag. A double-loop of sharp wire with a metal spike suspended between the two coils, pressing down on his tongue. The spike is sharp -- when Geralt reaches careful fingers into his mouth, tries to move it, blood wells from the gouge it leaves behind. And he at last is able to identify why he couldn't remove it last night: the wire loops are studded with sharp, backwards-facing barbs that dig into the gums and cheek and hold it in place. At the slightest jog the metal is flooded fresh with dark, red blood.

There is one advantage to having killed the bandits last night, Geralt muses, as he tries to loosen the branks; now he doesn't have to fight down the overwhelming urge to storm back to their camp and _kill them_ for what they've done to his friend.

Getting the thing off is harder than the rest of the work combined; it takes long minutes of trying to work his fingers into the space of Jaskier's mouth without pushing down on the device. Longer still to lift the wires free, work the barbs out of their hold, and despite his most exquisite care he knows he's ripping up Jaskier's mouth in the process. The bridle finally comes loose with another rush of blood spilling over Geralt's hand, and one of Jaskier's teeth comes with it. 

He _thinks_ the tooth was already lost before he started, torn out sometime last night and only held in place by the branks until now, but. _Fuck._

Geralt carefully turns Jaskier's head to the side, lets the bright red stream of blood run out of his open mouth onto the blanket beneath. He's still holding the wire device in one hand, stubby cut straps of leather sticking out of either corner and awash with Jaskier's blood, and --

Once his hands are clear he can finally give vent to just a little of the fury crashing through him; he crushes the wire coils in one hand, feels the sting of the sharp edges dig into his palm, feels a little of his blood mix with Jaskier's, and then flings it away into the stream. It glints once in the light, then sinks to the stones out of sight. Geralt storms off down the riverbank -- not out of sight, just far enough that he can pace angrily in circles to give some outlet to this restless fury. He's glad he killed them, by all the gods, he didn't kill them slow _enough._

Geralt tries to get hold of himself, to force the useless fruitless _worthless_ anger back down inside of him, to be busy and helpful instead of a raging monster. When Jaskier wakes up he'll give him the last of the antiseptic wash to rinse his mouth out. He'll get them both something to eat. He'll bandage him up and find him some clothes and he'll take him down to the town and he'll see him safe, and if anything, if _anyone_ tries to get in his way or harm the bard _one hair more_ than he's already been hurt, then --

Then Geralt will find something useful to do with this rage, after all.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Jaskier stays asleep till nearly noon, and is groggy and sick when he does wake up. Geralt sees him roll to the side on his bedroll -- well, Geralt's bedroll really -- hears some muffled retching, but there's nothing in the bard's stomach to come up. He waits for Jaskier to sit up, pressing his good hand to his mouth, before he approaches with a tin mug.

"Here. Rinse and spit. It'll be bitter," he says, pushing the cup into Jaskier's hand. " _Don't_ swallow any, whatever you do. "

He's set up a punchline there about swallowing but Jaskier doesn't follow up, taking the cup with a grimace and tipping it back in his mouth. He spits it out again instantly, a caustic spray several feet out over the ground; hacks and spits a few more times, then gives Geralt an outraged look.

"I warned you," Geralt says, then hands over the canteen of clean-boiled water. "Rinse again, then drink all you need. There's soup if you're hungry."

Jaskier shakes his head, looking faintly green, and Geralt lets it go. No point in shoving food down his throat if he's just going to bring it back up again. The bard takes a sip of water, spits it out, takes another. A series of strange expressions passes over his face as he does, carefully stretching the muscles of his jaw and face, gingerly touching the tip of his tongue to his lips. Going by the look on his face, it still hurts, but at least he's free.

When Geralt passes by again with another cup, Jaskier reaches up and takes hold of his wrist. Geralt could free himself without effort but instead he stills, pausing to look down at the bard, head cocked in silent inquiry.

Jaskier's mouth moves; it takes an effort for him to form words. " 'Ank oo,' " he says, wincing as he does so, whether from the pain of talking or from the garbled sound of it. He tries again. "'Hthank oo, Hkeralt."

He doesn't really think he's done much to be thanked for. He wasn't able to protect Jaskier, to keep him from being waylaid, wasn't able to find and rescue him before he got hurt so badly. Isn't able to do much for him now, all his rough field medicine no match for the injuries Jaskier's racked up. But it won't help to say any of that now, so he just nods in acceptance of Jaskier's words and takes a moment to turn his hand in Jaskier's, grip his wrist in return.

  
  


* * *

  
  


He gives Jaskier as much time to recover as they can spare, but around midafternoon Geralt starts packing up the camp and chivvying Jaskier to his feet. It's several miles back to town, some of it over rough ground and not roads, and they'll need to start soon if they mean to make it by dark. Geralt wants Jaskier under cover; somewhere he can get proper medical treatment for humans, somewhere away from cold and damp and predators following the smell of blood.

If they're going back into town, Jaskier will need some clothes; right now he's mostly wearing bandages and little else. Geralt doesn't have many spares, and none of his clothes will fit the bard; at best he'll be swimming in them, at worst he won't be able to walk without tripping. There must be something... yes.

At the very bottom of his pack, thrown in there and honestly forgotten, he finds a pair of black cloth trousers with a subtle grey weave that are very much _not_ his. Takes him a moment to remember where they came from, but when the memory hits him he almost laughs. 

He'd been very, _very_ drunk when it for some reason occurred to him that climbing into Yennefer's pants -- in a literal sense -- was in any way a good idea, and she hadn't wanted them back after that. Claimed he'd stretched them out too much to be any use, and she'd found her own ways to get repayment for that. Still, if he could fit into them -- a damnably _tight_ fit, from what he recalls, but he'd fit! -- then Jaskier can certainly fit into them.

He's still chuckling as he brings the pants and a spare undyed linen shirt over to Jaskier, who looks at him warily but does not ask. Getting him into the spare clothes is a limping, painful process, but by the end of it the bandages are mostly covered up and Jaskier looks. Well, he looks like a person again, not a patient, but with the plain colorless fabrics and the lost, hazy aura around him he still doesn't look like _Jaskier._

Still, it's an improvement.

"Walk, or ride?" he asks Jaskier as he finishes tying off the last of his gear. He's leaving behind the heavy cauldron and the blood-soaked blankets, much to Roach's evident relief. Her ears pin back as she swings her neck around to look at Jaskier, fixes one eye on Geralt and gives an indignant huff; he's never sure how much she understands of spoken word, but when it comes to intent and emotion she's smarter than many a human Geralt has met.

Jaskier gives the question serious consideration, a grimace passing over his face as he weighs the pros and cons. "Walk," he says at last, to Geralt's surprise. He'd made the offer to give Jaskier a choice in the matter, but he'd absolutely expected him to take the offer of a ride. His legs aren't broken, he _can_ walk, but it's going to be a painfully slow process and he can't quite understand why Jaskier isn't taking the easy way out.

He walks too, holding Roach's reins between them, just in case Jaskier changes his mind. He'll give it an hour, maybe two at a stretch, before Jaskier gives in and whines for a break.

He doesn't. 

It's a long, painfully quiet trip back into town.

  
  


* * *

  
  


At Cordam he gets Jaskier settled into the inn -- the same room he'd been in before, according to the innkeeper's daughter -- and goes off to see the alderman about the bandits they encountered on the road. Or, at worst, to tell the alderman that six of their town's citizens are dead.

There's no reward for them -- that would have been too lucky for him -- but nobody's particularly grieved to hear it, either. Apparently this particular band of troublemakers -- the alderman insists that they were not _bandits,_ though what makes the distinction Geralt has no idea; maybe just because bandits would have to be reported to the district magister and local nuisances do not -- are well-known around here.

Two brothers, Yan and Marek Dunfield, and a pack of three of their friends -- all of them unemployed layabouts and local rowdies. The Dunfields had owned a homestead out on the edge of town; when the father died two seasons back, the farm stopped producing, and the mother moved into town to live with her sons. There'd been some hope that she'd be a restraining influence on them, but apparently not. They'd grown more and more disorderly over time, graduating from begging to extorting and finally breaking into homes to robbing other townsmen of their goods. At last the town council had stepped in and banished the lot of them out of the town limits.

Banished them from the _town,_ but then done nothing more than that; Geralt is fuming when he leaves the man's office, closer than he likes to losing his temper and taking it out on a human. The town had decided that the Dunfield gang was not _their_ problem any more and left them to be a problem for everyone else. The gang had loitered at the town limits, harassing and robbing passersby -- all the locals had quickly learned to avoid the eastern road. Travelers from out of town, like Jaskier, had no warning.

Geralt restrains his fury enough to ask for a local apothecary or healer he can go to for help with Jaskier. He gets directions to a place on the downstream side of town -- run by the Dunfield's sister and her husband, apparently the only member of the family that didn't get thrown out of town with her brothers and mother.

Of fucking course.

Geralt's used to delivering bad news to relatives. Usually it's about missing people who turn up dead once the monster has been killed and the survivors can sift through the lair for bones. Sometimes it's for people he hadn't been fast enough to save. It's not usually people he killed himself, though it _has_ happened once or twice. 

It's his least favorite thing about this job, and that _includes_ occasionally being swallowed alive by selkiemores.

The directions he's been given takes him to a narrow street near the walled edge of town, where the roads are twisty and uneven and the houses packed into every available nook and cranny. This place, marked by a sign out front showing a stoppered bottle, looks like it was built out of what used to be a narrow alley; all one room on the first floor running back a good fifty feet, a second floor above that's probably where the owners sleep. The sister was married, the alderman said. Maybe he'll be lucky for once, and he'll get her husband instead.

He knocks on the door, which jars open under his hand; there's a faint _clanking_ of an iron-tongued bell over the door. "One moment," a female voice calls, and Geralt's heart sinks into his stomach as a young woman steps quickly to the door, opens it, and stops dead. "Oh," she says faintly.

They stare at each other for a moment, Geralt and the woman -- Malwina, the alderman had said. She has a narrow face, small features, skin faintly freckled. She wears mousy-brown hair in loose ringlets under a linen cap, much the same as her mother had worn. Aside from that, he can't see much resemblance to the men he killed last night. 

"Your brothers and mother are dead," Geralt says at last, to break the silence. Might as well get it out of the way first.

She takes that in without much change of expression; probably just his presence here was a big giveaway that something had happened. She takes a deep breath, lets it out, then says: "Finally picked the wrong victim, did they?"

Geralt inclines his head, the first half of a guarded nod. She looks him up and down, from his boots to his hair to his swords. "You're a Witcher," she says.

"Yes."

Malwina's frown grows. "Thought your kind kept to monsters, not common road vagabonds."

Geralt shrugs. "They attacked me," he says.

"And you had no choice at all but to kill them, did you?" Bitterness, as thick as lye, drips from her voice. "I guess incapacitating one old, unarmed lady would have been beyond your _Witcher_ skills?"

Geralt growls under his breath. "They took my friend. Hurt him," he says sharply. "I had to protect him first."

Some of the fight goes out of the woman then, her shoulder sagging slightly as the tension eases. What's left behind without the anger is... old pain, mostly. "Sounds like mum, yeah," she says.

Now that's a surprise. "You think your it was your mother?" Geralt says, startled into asking. "Not your brothers?"

"I think she egged them on. She always did." With a bitter twist to her mouth the woman steps backwards into the building, leaving the door beckoning open behind her. Slowly Geralt follows, ducking under the lintel and stopping just inside the door. 

Malwina moves around what is obviously a workroom, "Old-fashioned, mum was. A big fan of how things were done in 'the old country.' " She pours little piles of powder onto squares of paper, twists them together and ties them with bits of wire. "If you whined or ran your mouth, she gave you a reason to cry about it."

Geralt moves slowly, keeping his hands and swords clear of anything that might catch and break. "I'm sorry," he says at length. "About your family."

"I'm _not."_ The words are sharp and, Geralt thinks, not quite truthful. "The world is a better place with them gone. Maybe now I can go a week in this town without hearing about the latest horrible thing they've done. Maybe Stefan and I can finally live our own damn lives."

In the end she assembles a half-dozen sachets and a small glass bottle. Geralt recognizes most of them, antipyretics and painkillers and somniants, and it all looks right to him. Geralt reaches for his coin purse, prepared to pay whatever she asks, but instead her voice comes with the venom of a wasp's sting. "Keep your _money_ , Witcher. I don't want coin with my brothers' blood still on it."

His hand jerks back, then falls away. An unclean silence fills the room as Malwina packs away the medicines in a little sack, pushes it across the counter without touching Geralt's hands. He takes it, bows his head briefly, and turns to go.

To his surprise Malwina follows him to the door, though she doesn't step beyond it. "I'm..." she calls out as he starts to leave, and he turns back. "I'm sorry. About what happened to your friend. He didn't deserve that."

Despite her very real anger and bitterness, her words are sincere, and Geralt manages a respectful nod. "Neither did you," he says, and he turns to go.

Only once the door is closed and he's halfway down the street does it dawn on him: Malwina never once asked for a description of Jaskier's injuries, but managed to put together the right medical supplies for him anyway. Like she hadn't even needed to ask. Like she'd treated injuries just like them a hundred times, like they were all too familiar.

More than ever, Geralt suspects that the truest monsters live in stone houses and walk around in boots and call themselves humans.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Jaskier is asleep when he gets back, a much more restful sleep than he'd gotten in the forest camp that morning. The place seems secure enough, quiet enough, that Geralt feels more or less safe leaving Jaskier sleeping there when he gets up at dawn, goes downstairs and fetches Roach to ride back out the scene of the bloody bandit encounter.

It's undisturbed -- by humans at least. Foxes and ravens have made a start on the bodies; the softer tissues, eyes and tongue and viscera, are already gone. Out of respect for their sister, if nothing else, he drags the bodies together in the center of the camp and piles wood over them, constructing at least a crude pyre for them to share.

There's not much else in the squalid little camp worth taking, although he gathers together what little money and jewelry they had among them. Maybe Malwina will want these tokens, although he doubts it. It's not what he came back here for. He spends over an hour searching, almost in vain. Only a trick of the light shows it to him, one ray of dawnlight at just the right angle glints off something metal. He stoops and peers under the low bushes and sees it: Jaskier's lute, kicked aside and knocked under the bush. 

He pulls it out, brushes the dirt and leaves off it. Two strings are snapped and one of the wood seams is yawing open, but he thinks it looks like it can be fixed. He cleans it as best as he can on his sleeve, wraps the snapped wires around the neck so they don't snag, and puts it carefully away in Roach's saddlebags.

One of the horses has wandered off sometime in the past day; the other stuck around, looking decidedly spooked by the dead bodies but unwilling to leave what little familiarity it knew. Geralt takes the movables, the usable supplies, and loads them up on the remaining horse. He'd offer the horse to Jaskier, if not for the fact that the unwitting beast played its own role in his torment at the hand of the bandits. Still, the coin he gets from selling it will help pay for their stay at the inn, replace Jaskier's ruined clothing, pay for repairs to the lute. They were the ones that broke it; it's only fair that they should pay to fix it. For all he knows, some of the coin he reclaimed _is_ Jaskier's.

He mounts up on Roach, tying the other horse's reins to hers, and turns in the saddle one last time to look at the scene of the massacre. _Igni_ sends fire leaping from his hand to the pile of wood, and he turns his back and rides away from their growing pyre.

  
  


* * *

  
  


By the time he makes it back to the inn Jaskier is awake; he looks groggy, pushing himself up in the bed with one hand, his eyes puffy and squinting and his face lined and hollow from the ordeal of the past few days. They light up, all the same, when Geralt ducks in through the doorway.

"You're bag!" he says, only a little mumbled through his mangled mouth. " 'Ere'd you go? I fought... you leff."

"I had to get something," Geralt says, keeping his voice casual. He crosses the room in a few strides, and tosses his bundle into the bard's lap. "Here."

Jaskier's hand comes up to the neck of the lute in what looks like reflex, shifting it around to cradle it on his lap. Seeing Jaskier reunited with his beloved instrument is oddly satisfying, and he can't help but preen quietly a little at how Jaskier's eyes light up. "Geralt! You found it?" His expression falls somewhat as he takes in the damage, the snapped strings, the split seams. "Oh..."

"I'm no luthier, but it looks to me like it can be fixed," Geralt says, and he doesn't just mean the lute. It'll be a long time before he can actually play it again -- even if the instrument weren't damaged, Jaskier's dislocated shoulder is still not up to the strain of supporting and strumming the soundbox. Not yet. But it's stronger today than it was yesterday, stronger tomorrow than today. "You'll play again."

Geralt thought that would be a comfort to him. It always has been before. But the look on Jaskier's face as he cradles the damaged lute is -- well, Geralt's not quite sure what that look is, but it's not joy.

"Ow'd you find this?" Jaskier asks, hefting the lute in his hands.

Geralt shrugs. "Whole or broken, there were only so many places it could be," he says. "They never had a chance to sell it. It wasn't left behind on the road, or tossed aside on the trail back over the hill, so I knew it had to be at the camp."

Jaskier's eyebrows go up, and he tilts his head to one side. "Ow'd you find _that?"_ he says, more meaningfully. 

He knows Jaskier isn't just asking how he backtracked the trail. He sighs. "When you didn't arrive on time in Ellander, I went looking," he says. "I found the spot you were ambushed on the road and followed the trail back to their camp." The rest, well, Jaskier was there for the rest.

Jaskier squints a little, looking wary. "Ow'd you know I was going to Ellander at all?" he demands.

"I asked around."

Jaskier glares a little bit. " _Stalgging_ me?" he huffs.

"Just keeping tabs," Geralt defends himself. "You get into a lot of trouble, bard."

Jaskier grimaces; under the circumstances, he can't exactly dispute it. "'Ell..." he relents. "I'm glad you 'ere there."

That seems to cover most of it, so Geralt goes to unload the rest of his bags to sort out the content. "Geralt?" Jaskier says after a few minutes.

"Hm?" When Geralt looks up Jaskier's staring at his broken lute, looking very lost. His eyes, when he meets Geralt's, are blue cornflowers on a field of blood.

"Did you kill them all?" 

Then again, maybe Jaskier had been less present than he'd thought by the time Geralt dispatched the bandits and picked him up off the ground. He has to know the truth on some level, but if he needs to hear it out loud... "Yes, Jaskier. They're all dead."

Jaskier is silent at that; his jaw works and tightens, his gaze haunted. Geralt isn't sure whether he's glad or sorry to hear that his tormentors are dead; he's been downright bloodthirsty at times in the past, and other times surprisingly tender-hearted. Geralt can read grief and anger clear enough, hurt and regret, but can't tell if he's sorry that the bandits are all dead or only sorry that he didn't get a chance for his own catharsis.

After a few minutes of no response, Geralt goes back to his packing and sorting. He works in silence, only to be surprised by Jaskier's voice a minute later: "Geralt?" 

"Yes, Jaskier?" he glances up.

"Thank you."

Geralt grimaces, focusing intently on his belongings. Every time Jaskier thanks him it sends an uncomfortable crawling down his spine, for all the things he hadn't been able to do right. "You don't need to keep thanking me."

"Not for _that,"_ Jaskier says with heavy meaning. He waves a hand down his body... his lute? Is he thanking Geralt for retrieving the lute? Honestly Geralt isn't sure _what_ that gesture is supposed to mean. "For this."

Geralt shrugs and turns away. He still isn't sure what to say to that. _It was nothing_ is manifestly untrue; _no problem,_ equally so. _You're welcome_ sounds too formal, stiff, something you'd say for passing the salt, not rescuing someone from an ugly death. As far as he's concerned, he shouldn't need to say it, because Jaskier doesn't need to thank him. There is nothing to thank him for; he couldn't have done otherwise. Can't even _imagine_ doing otherwise.

"Geralt?"

He sighs, dropping the heavy satchel back on the bed. " _Yes,_ Jaskier?" he demands, testy.

" 'Oos pants am I wearing?!"

* * *

~tbc...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The [scold's bridle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scold's_bridle) is (or was) a real thing, although wrong medieval tradition -- as far as I know it only ever turned up in the British Isles. sometimes I agree with geralt -- humans are fucking awful.
> 
> I wasn't originally going to include the scene with the sister, but it struck me that one of the things that I really find affecting about the Witcher TV show is how consistently it shows that even awful people have close ties and people who love them, and the ways even well-meant or righteous acts of violence cause ripples and unseen consequences. I hoped I captured a little bit of that feeling with Malwina.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If there was a monster feeding off of Jaskier, Geralt would know what to do. Some monsters -- certain kinds of ghosts and higher vampires, mostly -- feed on the minds of they prey rather than their bodies, causing them to slowly waste away. Find the vampire, kill the vampire, problem solved. If this were some kind of curse, a sorcerer's magic or a djinn's malice... he wouldn't be able to fix it himself, but he knows witches who could. He'd still be able to _do_ something.
> 
> But there's no monster, no curse. Just men, and painful memories.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gosh, this chapter got so soppy!! serious sap ahoy guys.

Despite all the care Geralt took to keep the dressings clean, by the end of the day Jaskier's wounds are hot and inflamed and he's burning with fever. The bard spends the next few days tossing and twisting miserably in his bedsheets. Geralt nurses him through it, going through the medicines Malwina mixed up for him and trying to ignore the awful feeling that squirms in his gut every time Jaskier lets out a pained moan. The man mumbles a lot, mostly unintelligible through the torn and swollen tissues of his mouth. Geralt wishes he would let them rest, let them heal, but Jaskier's never listened to Geralt telling him to shut up before and it's too much to hope that he'll start now.

By the fourth day Jaskier's fever has ebbed, the open wounds have scabbed over, and Geralt is seething with impatience to get out of Cordam. No monsters plague this town and the townspeople have little use for a Witcher. The news of the Dunfields' death has clearly gotten around town and while they may not mourn the deaths of the brigands, it's clear they have no welcome for their killer.

When he packs up his gear and saddles up Roach, somewhat to his surprise, Jaskier falls in behind him. He didn't ask the bard to leave with him -- honestly, Jaskier could use another month of rest at least. Fever or no fever, he's still weak from loss of blood and in a great deal of pain from his lingering wounds. Open road and rough forest camps are no place for a convalescent.

But for once Jaskier shows no desire to stay in the comforts of town, or to be in the presence of strangers. He looks spooked, eyeing the townsmen with an unaccustomed wariness, and sticks to Geralt's elbow like a burr. Not all the wounds left on him by his ordeal were physical, it seems -- and Geralt doesn't have the heart to force him to stay behind.

Being on the road again is -- strange. It's one thing to ride in quiet when he's alone; he can let his own thoughts absorb him or devote all his attention to his surroundings, depending on how dangerous the situation seems. But he's constantly aware of the bard's presence -- the impact of his footfalls, the labor of his breathing and even the sound of his heart, which perks up faster than normal as they pass by the place where he was first ambushed. Jaskier's very existence is something that demands his attention, his regard -- but Jaskier isn't talking, and the silence feels wrong.

He briefly considers saying something himself, if only to break up the monotone silence. Briefly. But he never had the skill of chattering about nothing, and besides, it would be cruel to ask questions of Jaskier when he can't answer.

So he says nothing, except to call a halt near midday for a break when he notices Jaskier's pace flagging, and again in late afternoon as the sun slants down and shadows cover the western slopes. Jaskier must know why Geralt is doing it -- Geralt never takes breaks, unless to rest his horse -- but he doesn't say anything about it.

They reach Ellander the next day, a full week after Jaskier was supposed to perform at a public-house there; the proprietor is inclined to grumble about his lateness but his wife, at least, is sympathetic to the tale of woe that explains it. She gives them both a meal on the house and a room to share for the night, in lieu of the payment he would have gotten for his performance.

Geralt fully expects that Jaskier will remain in Ellander; one thing for him to not want to stay in the town his tormentors had come from, whose neighbors and relatives live there still, but Ellander is as peaceful and prosperous a town Geralt has ever been in. So it's somewhat a surprise when he goes to saddle up Roach the next morning and Jaskier swings in at his heels, ready to leave on a dime.

On the road to Lyria Geralt finds and breaks up a noonwraith circle, which earns enough coin from the grateful farmers to pay for the services of a luthier in Lyria. To Geralt's well-hidden relief, the elfin-looking old man judges the damage not beyond repair, and a day later the instrument is back in Jaskier's hands in one piece again.

An hour later it's hidden away in Roach's saddlebags, where it rides for the rest of the trip out of Lyria. Jaskier doesn't play it, doesn't even look at it.

Geralt is at a loss. He had thought Jaskier would be overjoyed to have his beloved instrument returned to him. He really thought it would help. Because it's been ten days since Jaskier was attacked on the road, and although he's recovering physically, there's still a chilling shroud over his behavior.

He's still not talking.

Geralt doesn't _like_ Jaskier's constant chatter, by any means. But he's heard it often enough to become accustomed to it, to filter out the words and listen only to the sound of it. Jaskier's voice, even when he's not singing, goes up and down all over the scales like every complaint is a song; a marked difference from Geralt's own flat monotone or the curt, heavy voices of most of the townspeople he interacts with. It's sometimes amusing, sometimes annoying... but now that he's without it, he misses it.

Maybe the difference is that when Geralt is alone, he's free to imagine Jaskier off somewhere, living his best life, surrounded by food and wine and music and inadvisable one-night-stands and chattering his head off to people who can actually respond in kind. It's _not_ the same as having him there but silent -- no, _silenced,_ it's not that he's _choosing_ silence; it's been forced on him, and the knowledge of that fact _galls._

Even the constant humming has stopped.

Geralt needs a way to fix this.

* * *

Maybe what Jaskier needs is to be near other bards. Maybe that creative spark can be passed along from someone else who has it, like a taper to a lantern. He makes up his mind to bring it up, no matter the pang of unhappiness he gets at Jaskier leaving him to spend more time with other humans.

They've just left behind another town, and this time Geralt is already expecting Jaskier to follow him onto the road again. They've set up another forest camp, on a stone ledge above a creek with a cliff wall behind them, and Geralt is checking Roach for thorns and rocks when he clears his throat. "You know," he says. "If there's somewhere you're looking for, somewhere you'd rather be... You can. I'll see you there."

"That eager to be rid of me?" Jaskier flashes a thin smile at Geralt, but even that soon fades.

"You're still injured," Geralt points out. "If there's a place you'd feel safer while those heal... Oxenfurt, Vizima, I can take you there to stay while you finish healing."

Jaskier shakes his head, looking down at his hands. "And how would I earn my board there, as a bard who can't play?"

"Hm." Geralt strolls over until he's standing over Jaskier, frowning down at him. "Hold out your arm. No, your other arm," he says when Jaskier starts to raise his right arm.

With some misgivings, Jaskier holds out his left arm in front of him. Geralt leans over and pushes it down, without resistance. "No, push back at me," he says.

"Geralt, I've never beaten anyone at arm-wrestling in my life, I don't think I can start with you," Jaskier protests.

"I know that. I just want to see how much of your strength has come back," Geralt says. Jaskier puts a little more effort into it this time, and Geralt exerts pressure downward until he feels Jaskier's muscles beginning to tremble with strain. "Not bad," he declares as he lets up, and Jaskier rubs at his wrist. "Give it another fortnight, and your arm should be back to normal. You can still play, even if you're not up to singing yet."

"Hm," Jaskier doesn't sound as enthused about that as Geralt expected; not for the first time, he wonders why Jaskier doesn't seem to _want_ to get his music back. 

Crawling chills in his chest again, the old familiar guilt. It makes him want to ask -- a subject he hadn't wanted to broach before, when even a short sentence made Jaskier's mouth split and bleed -- but it makes him want to ask the question that's been nagging him since Jaskier went missing from a safe road to Ellender.

"Do you know why those men targeted you, Jaskier?" he asks at last.

"No idea," Jaskier says shortly.

"They didn't say anything to you?" Geralt prodded him. "Nothing about -- Witchers, or Kaer Morhen, or anything like that?"

Jaskier looks up at him, his brow knotted with what looks like honest confusion. "No, why would they have?" 

It's less of a relief to hear that than he would have thought. "Just trying to figure out why they would go after a traveler who clearly didn't have enough money to be worth robbing," he says.

Jaskier lets out a long sigh. "I didn't _do_ anything to them," he says. He sounds almost -- defeated.

"Didn't say you did."

"I know you were thinking it," Jaskier's shoulders hunch defensively. "That I 'get into a lot of trouble.' I know, I'm annoying, I piss people off, I deserve it."

Geralt frowns. "No amount of 'annoying' deserves what they did." As a connoisseur of Jaskier's particular brand of annoying, he feels like he should know.

"I didn't even _do anything._ I -- " Jaskier's voice breaks, a little. Geralt realizes, too late, that his probing questions -- entirely baseless, it seems -- have broken open a wound still raw with only a week's healing.

He sits down on the log in front of the fire, close enough to brush shoulders with Jaskier. "I believe you," he says.

"I was just -- going about my business. On the road." Jaskier takes several breaths before continuing. "Just composing, you know I like to compose while I walk. It helps keep a good rhythm."

It was a habit Geralt was intimately familiar with. Composing was much more aggravating to listen to than simply reciting, since the music constantly broke off and restarted as Jaskier tried to get the tune right. He always looked forward to the days when composing was complete and Jaskier was merely rehearsing. "Mhm."

"Anyway, I came around the bend and they were there," Jaskier continues. "Four of them, all covered in rusty armor and greasy hair. They were rowdy. Drunk, I think. In the middle of the day! Acting like the road, the whole wide world belonged to them and only them, and _I_ was trespassing.

"One of them threw a bottle at my head. Told me to stop my caterwauling, quit making so much noise. As though they weren't making twice as much noise. I --" Jaskier's breath clogs in his mouth, he has to swallow. "I told them to go fuck themselves. Called them a few names I'd been saving up. That was all. I guess that was enough."

"They just wanted an excuse," Geralt says. Not that he'd known these particular ruffians personally, but he knew their type all too well. "Drunk, bored, looking for entertainment. If it hadn't been you it would have been someone else, whoever the next traveler down the road was."

Jaskier blinks back tears. And would it have been better or worse if Jaskier had taken a different road out of town, and the brigands had set on some other hapless traveler instead -- one with no Witcher to ride to their rescue? Would he have spotted the tracks, would he have bothered to follow them, would he have the resolution to see it through, if it hadn't been Jaskier they'd snatched?

"They set on me." Jaskier continues. "I hardly got to throw a punch. _You_ never would have let a mangy pack of mongrels like that keep you down. Well, you didn't, did you? And that was all six of them together, not just four."

He sounds -- bitter, almost self-loathing. "I don't expect you to be me, Jaskier," Geralt points out. "I don't expect anyone else to be me." If ordinary men could match the feats of a witcher, after all, there'd be no need for his kind in the world.

Jaskier doesn't seem to have heard him, caught up in his own memories. "They couldn't seem to decide. First it's all 'oh, let's make the pretty bard sing.' Five minutes later it's 'shut the fuck up, shut your noise.' Fuck's sake. Make up your minds already... " Jaskier breaks off, glancing at Geralt's face, then drops his gaze off to the side, staring into the darkness. "Then it's all 'Hold him down, I'll give him something to cry about,' and... You don't want to hear about this," he says miserably.

"I've heard worse," Geralt says, because he has, heard and seen worse; nothing Jaskier has to say will harm him. That's apparently the wrong thing to say, though, judging by the way Jaskier's shoulders cinch in and his head drops. "Say what you need to say," he tries, and that's a little better.

"I thought you'd be in camp 'shut the fuck up,' " Jaskier smiles a little bit, but it's not entirely a joke, and that -- that stings.

"No," he says shortly.

"I keep thinking..." Jaskier says in a low voice, barely heard over the crackle of the fire. "That if I hadn't been singing, I could have walked right on by. They wouldn't have bothered me if not for that."

Geralt thinks that unlikely. He also wonders if that's what's behind Jaskier's strange silences, his sudden lack of enthusiasm for his lute and voice. If the humiliation and pain he endured has become linked, in his mind, to his music and song...

"They're dead now," he offers.

Jaskier doesn't answer, only huddling further into himself, inching closer to the fire as though its heat can protect him. His eyes are swimming in the firelight, and Geralt feels the unpleasant pang in his chest again. Wonders why; Jaskier just said, after all, that the roadside attack had nothing to do with him. That the bandits had no connection to him, to monsters, to anything in Geralt's purview at all -- just common, banal human maliciousness.

He couldn't have prevented it, and he came to Jaskier's aid as soon as he possibly could. There's absolutely no reason whatsoever for him to be, or feel, responsible for _any_ of this. So why does he still feel this way...?

Oh. 

It's not guilt, he realizes with a sudden unaccustomed burst of clarity. He's _used_ to guilt, but this is something different, for all it claws at his stomach and sings along his nerves. This isn't guilt, this is _sympathy._ He aches when Jaskier hurts, simply _because_ Jaskier is hurting. Somehow since meeting the bard, he's let him close enough that Jaskier's pain becomes his own.

It's been a long time since that happened. _Years._

It's just his luck, that the next one to find their way into his heart is the bard. And just his luck, too, that he only realizes what he loves when he's in danger of losing it.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Geralt is a witcher, a being molded and trained and practiced in many years to kill monsters. To seek them, hunt them, and destroy them when they threaten human settlements or travelers. He's memorized whole compendiums of monster lore, he knows all there is to know about tracking, he has decades of combat training and a mouthful of magic to aid him in battle when regular strength fails. He has potions and poisons and oils of every imaginable sort to counter, combat, and aid in the swift dispatch of beasts and devils of every description.

And fucking _none_ of it is any use to him now.

If there was a monster feeding off of Jaskier, Geralt would know what to do. Some monsters -- certain kinds of ghosts and higher vampires, mostly -- feed on the minds of they prey rather than their bodies, causing them to slowly waste away. Find the vampire, kill the vampire, problem solved. If this were some kind of curse, a sorcerer's magic or a djinn's malice... he wouldn't be able to fix it himself, but he knows witches who could. He'd still be able to _do_ something.

But there's no monster, no curse. Just men, and painful memories with a tighter grip than a kappa. He has no training in how to comfort, no magic to aid in healing. None. The best he can possibly offer is rough and painful field surgery, and when he's reached the limits of that, what then? He barely knows how to clean a wound or set a broken bone; what can he do when the injuries are on the mind, or on the heart? There's no magical force or fire that can lift this fog, and no amount of silver can drive back these demons.

Geralt travels with Jaskier by his side, sees him hurting every day, and there is absolutely _nothing_ he can do about it.

He's never felt more worthless. 

Jaskier is healing physically, but seems to be still brought low by this malady of the spirit. He's not sleeping well -- Geralt can hear his nightmares -- and he still refuses to even look at the lute that rides along in Roach's saddlebags. Jaskier sticks to Geralt's side with singleminded determination, jumping at shadows, shrinking every time they pass a stranger on the road; only in Geralt's presence does he seem to feel even marginally safe.

Every day on the road Geralt looks at Jaskier and runs down the list of things he can do that might help Jaskier heal, and every day he reaches the end of the list and comes up short. He curses his inadequacy, tries to think of something to say to break the silence, and in the end says nothing. Does nothing. There's nothing he can do.

If he wants to craft the right words, or find beauty in an ugly world, or lift a person's spirits, that's the sort of thing he would turn _to_ Jaskier for. Geralt himself knows nothing about beauty, or joy, or -- wait.

Wait.

There _is_ something. If he's right.

He checks the angle of the sun, looks around him to find his bearings in the rugged landscape, and yes, he's just about where he thought. He hasn't been down this road for fifteen years, but if his memory serves, just a few hours ride in the other direction --

He checks Roach, wrestles him around, holds out a hand for Jaskier to mount behind him. "Come on," he says to Jaskier's surprised expression. "Get up."

"Geralt?" Jaskier takes his outstretched hand after a moment of hesitation, follows him up onto the horse's saddle. "What is it?"

"Change of plans," Geralt says over his shoulder, and kicks Roach up to a trot. If they move fast enough, they can just about get there before sundown.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Jaskier stays quiet for the first two hours of the trip, but when the trail peters out into underbrush and the slope turns from punishing to perilous, he starts to whine a bit. Geralt almost enjoys hearing it, honestly, after Jaskier's uncharacteristic pallid silence over the past two weeks. He ignores the persistent questions, mostly because they'll be there soon and he hopes that when Jaskier sees, he'll understand without Geralt having to explain. (And also because Jaskier gets _hilariously_ aggravated when Geralt ignores him.)

They scramble up a switchback trail, drop over a ridge, and Geralt finds his landmark, a peak just visible between two ridges off to the right. There's no roads up here, no outposts -- the land is rugged enough to not be worth farming or even hunting when there's easier lands down below. 

The sun is sinking steadily behind them, shadows stretching long off the backs of the peaks, and Geralt urges Jaskier along a little faster. Jaskier grumbles, but he goes, which is all Geralt really wanted.

Just before sunset they make it; a spill of gravel makes a rough path between two halves of a split boulder, and then they're in the dell. The little valley is almost completely hidden between the surrounding slopes, an almost perfectly circular ring of green that, at this time of year, is just coming into flower. Ahead of them to the east is a tall, rugged wall of rock that flings its peak up into the sky like a watchtower, and over the edge of it spills a long ribbon of water, flinging misty sprays against the sheer rock wall before tumbling into a basin far below.

"Well, this _is_ lovely," Jaskier huffs, still catching his breath after the last climb. "But was it _really_ necessary to climb up half a rock wall to get here? There were plenty of perfectly good places to camp further down, Geralt!"

Geralt motions him to turn around, facing the waterfall. "Wait," he says. "Watch."

Jaskier glares at him, then with a sigh turns in the direction Geralt indicated. He folds his arms across his chest, his breath finally evening out, and waits.

The sun continues to set.

A ray of golden light cuts precisely between the two peaks behind them and lands on the waterfall, and as they watch, the falls begin to glow with as if from within. Red and gold hues of sunset mix with the silvery mist until it looks like a pure fall of fire is pouring down the cliff, a rushing river of molten gold, a shower of treasure beyond any dragon's hoard. The waning light splits on the mist into a halo of soft shifting rainbows, flashing and refracting at the very edge of vision.

It only looks at this at the right time of day, at the right time of year, when the sun is in the right position in the sky. Geralt only happened on this place by sheer luck -- he'd been chasing a particularly tenacious _mulo_ at just the right time -- but he'd never forgotten it.

As the sun sinks further the symphony of fire grows brighter and richer, the spectacle increasing as the surrounding cliffs begin to darken. But Geralt isn't looking at the falls; he's looking at Jaskier instead.

Jaskier stares at the spectacle in front of him with huge eyes, mouth slightly agape, and that -- _that,_ right _there --_ _that_ was the reaction he was hoping for. That more-than-a-little-gobsmacked expression, the one that Jaskier always gets when he falls in love with something beautiful. A beautiful woman, a lovely song, a picturesque valley, even an especially good meal. It could be a hundred things because Jaskier falls in love with the world at every turn, in all of its manifold facets. And watching Jaskier love the world, Geralt can love it a little bit, too.

"I found this place years ago," Geralt says, when it becomes obvious that Jaskier won't say anything. "I doubt most of the people who live around here even know it exists. But I..." he takes a deep breath, trying to push the words out through stiff lips. "Always thought.... it would be a nice thing if... a bard wrote a song about it."

Jaskier stands still as a statue, watching the falls, hands clasped in front of him. After a very, very long time he turns to look at Geralt, and there's a smile on his face, and tears in his eyes. 

"Geralt of Rivia, you absolutely horrendous liar," he says, and there's a wry humor in his voice that Geralt has been missing for _weeks_. "You never thought any such thing."

Geralt looks away, shrugging a little in embarrassment. He's right; Geralt always enjoyed having the solitude of the mountain valley, the secret knowledge of one of the world's wonders that no one else could diminish for him. But if this is what it takes to lift Jaskier from his melancholy, then it'll be more than worth losing his solitude over it.

"Why did you show this to me?" Jaskier asks softly.

Geralt takes a moment, trying to find the words, put into voice things he's been worrying over for the last ten days of silence. "You don't... sing any more. I thought this might help," he says at last, but that's not all of it, that's not even half. 

"I don't... I don't want you to lose your joy in music because of those pieces of _shit_." He grits his teeth on a snarl, just speaking of them. "I don't want you to lose your joy in everything. It's the best part of you, it's a light in you, and I don't want that light to go out."

"You hate my music," Jaskier objects. "Not a big fan of my 'joy in everything,' for that matter. You think I'm flighty, and soft, and useless. You've no use for my songs, or any other."

"Don't put words in my mouth," Geralt says. 

"Well, you don't, so _someone_ has to," Jaskier exclaims, and Geralt sighs. Words have never been his strong suit; he'd rather just do something than talk about it, and he'd hoped that Jaskier would understand without having to put it into words. Should've known better, really.

He turns back to the waterfall, finds it easier not to look at Jaskier as he says this. These are words he's never spoken to _anyone,_ not even other Witchers; it's something they all understand implicitly. "Everything I am, everything I've made myself to be has to be hard. I'm not meant for soft things. I've no talent at beauty, or joy. The very most I can hope for is to make the world a little less shitty. I can't make it any more beautiful. You can. You... you can make this --" he waves a hand, encompassing the waterfall, the valley, the ethereal beauty of it all -- "appear in anyone's mind, anywhere. That's something that I'll never be able to do."

Jaskier stands there for a long time, occasionally wiping tears off his cheeks. At last he heaves a sigh and turns to Geralt, shaking his head, planting his hands on his hips. "It's a nice sentiment, Geralt, but it won't do," he says briskly. "People want to hear songs that are _stories_. Love, adventure, exciting battles and melees with plenty of blood and gore. 

"Sex is popular. So's revenge, or trickery. Wicked people getting their comeuppance in a way that leaves people cheering or laughing or in tears. Nobody wants to hear a song about... fire waterfalls or rainbow cliffs." He gestures wildly towards the panorama behind them. "It's all very pretty, but it's not _illustrative_ enough."

Geralt frowns. "Well... I would," he says. "Want to hear a song like that."

Jaskier's looking at him, now, not the falls. The reddish light of sunset makes his eyes look more blue than ever, soft and sentimental where they focus on Geralt. "Maybe I'll write it after all, then," he concedes. "Sing it just for you."

His breath stutters, and he has to force it back under control. "I'd like that," he says, and it comes out sounding almost calm.

He comes closer, and Geralt lets him. Puts his hands on Geralt's shoulders, and Geralt lets him. Leans in and up and places a kiss at the corner of Geralt's mouth, soft and sweet, and Geralt -- "I love you too, you know," he says quietly.

Geralt freezes, heart screaming into panic mode for a moment before catching up to the last few seconds. "I didn't even say it," he says, his voice strangled. 

"No," Jaskier says. "But I heard it. After all, you brought me here."

Geralt is no poet; he isn't suited to beautiful things. But he has at least enough sense of how songs and stories go to know what's _supposed_ to be done under a beautiful sunset, wreathed by misty rainbows and backlit by a shower of pure fire, with a person he cares deeply, achingly for in his arms. This hadn't been what he'd intended by bringing Jaskier here; he'd genuinely intended no more than to cheer him up, restore some of that bright vital spark. But, well. Maybe this will turn out even better than he'd planned. 

He kisses him.

Jaskier kisses back.

And the sounds he makes in Geralt's arms is the most beautiful song Geralt has ever heard.

  
  


* * *

~end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the valley and waterfall were based on Horsetail Falls at Yosemite National Park, which is where the image is from as well.
> 
> geralt ended up being so soft in this chapter. Well, not that we didn't see it last chapter, when he straight up called Jaskier "my friend" in his convo with Malwina. still. He's softer than his show-Geralt; I drew somewhat on the characterization of book-Geralt, who is a lot more open about how much he cares. but on the whole, my read on geralt is that he's not naturally an asshole, it's just the world keeps giving him shit. he'd be a lot more laid-back if the world would stop giving him shit for just five minutes. 
> 
> geralt's love language is acts of service and you can't change my mind.


End file.
